Resident Evil: Racoon City confirmed by Capcom

The rumours are true: Capcom is to release a new team-based shooter from the creators of the worst SOCOM game ever made. We can only imagine the fan petitions that will result…

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles – the last time Capcom (re)visited Racoon City

News of Racoon City (a reference to the metropolis at the centre of the zombie outbreak in the first three games) leaked last November, but now the American Official Xbox Magazine has run the first official preview.

Website StickSkills.com took notes and reports that the game is set in 1988 and sees you playing as USS (Umbrella Security Services) mercenaries out to silence BSAA (the organisation Chris was a member of in Resident Evil 5) agents and any civilians that know more than they should.As you might imagine the game is trying to be darker and more “dirty” than previous Resident Evil games, with a three-way fight between the USS, American Special Forces and the zombies and other monsters.

Your team will be composed of four new characters: Vector, Beltway, Bertha, and Spectre – with Hunk from Resident Evil 2 as an unlockable extra. Naturally there will be lots of other familiar areas from the original games, but the intention is to make the experience as accessible as possible to non-fans.

Previous events won’t be set in stone and you’ll be able to “change the history of Resident Evil” by offing characters that originally survived, with Leon S. Kennedy apparently being Umbrella enemy number one.

Although the multiplayer features aren’t specified at the moment there will be an experience point system which allows you to unlock new abilities, weapons and equipment – such as Vector’s camouflage coat.

So, basically it is SOCOM but with zombies. But the problem is, whether you find the above appealing or not, that developer Slant Six has a pretty terrible track record. They’re not the regular SOCOM developer (that’s MAG creators Zipper Interactive) but are instead responsible for the awful SOCOM Confrontation.

This was a game so bad Sony had to get Zipper back in to make SOCOM 4, in order to wash the nasty taste away.

Of course we have to give them the benefit of the doubt but it seems it would’ve been hard for Capcom to find a less safe pair of hands for a game whose very concept is unlikely to please Resident Evil fans pinning for a return to the series’ survival horror roots.

We’ll leave you with this description from the magazine preview: “This is not a one-versus-one game where you’ve got one clip full of ammo and zombies on you. If you’ve ever thought of those times in an RE game when you thought, ‘I’d wish I had a big gun’, that’s what this game is. It’s not fair to give people big guns, then take all the ammo away.”